I have to admit that I have kind of a dicy relationship with the scientific method. Observe. Develop a hypothesis. Test said hypothesis. Develop new hypothesis. I know it and I’ve used it but sometimes it feels . . . limiting. This was an especially serious problem when my son was doing science fair projects. They wanted the young scientists to use the scientific method. But these same young scientists could do an observational experiment or a model. Umm . . . guys? These don’t entirely sink with that whole scientific method thing.

Today I read a post on Melissa Stewart’s Celebrate Science blog. If you write about science for young readers, you need to bookmark this blog. This particular post deals with the list of practices that are reshaping how science is taught in the schools.

As explained by Sweet, in 2012, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine published A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. This document was written by a committee of scientists and engineers in order to provide recommendations to overhaul K-12 science education. Why overhaul? Because the scientific method is limited and doesn’t reflect the modern understanding of the natural world and how scientists do their work. This framework was used to develop the Next Generation Science Standards, released in 2013 and currently being implemented in schools nationwide.

Instead of the scientific method, we now have a variety of practices. It’s important to understand that not all of these practices are implimented in any given situation. They are a listing of different ways that scientists and engineers answer questions and solve problems.